Assistant Vice President, Supply Chain Management
Scripps Health
San Diego, California
Comments by nominator Craig Dabbs, HealthTrust account director:
Cecile has built a high-performing team of supply chain professionals who drive the contracting efforts at Scripps Health. She is a master at developing and communicating strategy while empowering her team to achieve results. Cecile has also had great success integrating clinical input into supply chain decision-making. Her approach blends analytics, operations and clinician support to drive the best patient outcomes possible while protecting the bottom line.
Scripps Health at a glance: Scripps Health is a private, nonprofit, integrated health system in San Diego, California, comprising five acute-care hospital campuses, home health care services, 27 outpatient centers and clinics and hundreds of affiliated physician offices throughout the region.
- Year joined Scripps Health: 2003
- Born/raised: Minnesota
- Degree(s): BS, management information systems, Metropolitan State University, St. Paul, Minnesota. MBA, Capella University. Lean Six Sigma certified.
- First “real” job out of school: Certified pharmacy technician at St. John’s Health East inpatient pharmacy and Target Pharmacy in Roseville Minnesota.
Some prior work highlights:
- I began my healthcare career as a certified pharmacy technician for multiple inpatient hospital pharmacies while attending college, which gave me over eight years’ experience working directly with pharmacists and physicians understanding oncology, dosing and the importance of centering care around the patient.
- While working in hospital pharmacies, I was involved in care processes and utilizing multiple IT systems, which advanced my career into healthcare consulting. Throughout my consulting career I was involved in a variety of projects, such as implementation of patient care and financial IT systems, redesigning departmental workflows and staffing based on new management systems.
- Scripps Health has leveraged my talents and involved me with leading significant change for the organization. Supporting and leading Scripps Health’s strategic objectives has been the most rewarding in my career.
A key mentor or event in your life:
- Working with nurses, physicians and staff has been the most influential experience in my career and personal growth. Their feedback has improved who I am as a leader and has had a profound impact on my work, and on my supply chain team’s relationships and results.
- I’ve been very fortunate to have leaders who allowed me to lead areas of improvements that have changed our supply chain from a traditional model to one that supports patient delivery systems, provides value at the point of use, and encourages real-time health system concepts.
- One leader in particular – Scripps Health Corporate Senior Vice President Lisa Thakur – has been very supportive in giving me autonomy to assess, redesign, improve, lead and encourage teams to think differently and out of the norm. Her confidence and counsel have inspired me to be innovative and expand my skills to lead transformation and change.